Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski’s upcoming sci-fi project Oblivion has grown in hype quite a bit since it was first announced. Mostly that’s due to the fact that Tom Cruise signed on to be its headliner, and whenever that happens a movie suddenly goes from being a project of the director to being a “Tom Cruise movie” in the hearts and minds of the public.
But, spotlight-hogging by Cruise aside, Oblivion is a movie that’s been quietly developing into quite the little ensemble piece over the past few weeks. The film is about a man on a post-apocalyptic world who discovers a crash-landed space ship containing a mysterious woman. Cruise is playing the lead, of course, but Olga Kurlyenko has already signed on to play his wife back home, Andrea Riseborough has signed on to play the crash-landed woman, and according to Deadline Nashoba, not only has Morgan Freeman signed on for a critical role, but Game of Thrones’ Jamie Lannister, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, has also agreed to come on playing the role of Sykes, who is said to be a badass weapons expert. After seeing what he has to offer playing a smug warrior in Game of Thrones, this is a role that I’m confident Coster-Waldau can pull off.
I can’t say that I was very impressed with Kosinski’s Tron sequel, other than marveling at its visuals for 15 minutes or so, but I’m starting to get kind of optimistic about this one. The cast he’s working with here is already way more impressive than Garrett Hedlund and a computer-faced Jeff Bridges, and the script for this film is an adapted screenplay that Kosinski put together from his own graphic novel with the help of one other writer, rather than a committee written script with six different writers’ names on it like the one he got for Tron: Legacy.
If Kosinski can match the impressive ensemble he’s assembled and his flair for the visual with a script that’s just as worthwhile, then we might be in store for something pretty impressive here. Maybe.